


Northern Lights

by garrideb



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Implied Torture, M/M, Minor Character Death, References to Suicide, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-10
Updated: 2012-12-10
Packaged: 2017-11-20 18:59:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/588612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/garrideb/pseuds/garrideb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik experiences a frightening new aspect of Charles's telepathy while rescuing him from captivity.  But while it might frighten Erik, that doesn't mean he'll run away from Charles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Northern Lights

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Brenda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brenda/gifts).



> Thank you very much to my beta, Harmonyangel. Thank you also to my recipient for an inspiring prompt; I realize this veers quite a bit from the actual prompt, but I hope it's close enough to what you were looking for.

**1961**

Erik finally has his target cornered in a small cabin in a snowy field. After weeks of hunting, of planning, of cultivating sources and cashing in favors, Erik is within sight of his target's hideout. The urge to rush forward gnaws at him, a restless hunger, so he forces himself to pause and consider his next steps.

He has a perfect vantage point, perched among the foothills overlooking the cabin's valley. From where he sits he can see two choices; he can make a straight line to the cabin's front door, cutting through the stark white field, or he can circle around through the foothills and approach the back of the cabin, where a scattering of pine trees will provide some cover. 

Erik considers flipping his coin.  He would ignore the result, of course, but that's part of the pleasure of flipping Schmidt's coin.  He's been looping it around his fingers since he took in his first glimpse of the cabin. It's usually an elegant trick, but the effect is ruined somewhat by his thick black gloves.  There's no space for the coin to pass between his fingers except at the very tips.  He'd taken his gloves off earlier while resting at the peak of a mountain so that he could focus his thoughts while moving the coin in its usual pattern, but his hands had gone numb very quickly and Erik had forfeited to the cold.  He'd pulled his gloves back on with clumsy movements, the coin tucked inside flat against his palm. 

He'd had to take it out again.  His hands had started itching for movement as he took in the cabin, a solitary sentry in the vast, frozen landscape. His target was there, inside that vulnerable building.  All Erik had to do was cross an open field of snow.

There is only one window in the front, and a person would have to be staring straight out to notice Erik approaching.  At that point a person might fire shots from the cabin, set up a trap inside, or flee the back into the woods.  Erik figures he has a good chance of deflecting a bullet.  He may be able to sense a trap once he is closer, if the trap involves metal.  And if his target flees out the back, well, there will be tracks in the snow.  

If he still wears steel in his boots like he did in the camps, it will make Erik's job even easier.  

Erik glances at the sky and that decides it.  It's getting darker and he's not going to risk climbing through the jagged foothills in the dark.  He will risk getting shot, but he's not going to risk falling to his death just for a stealthier approach.  There are crevasses and cliff edges hidden in the snow, and even if the fall didn't break his neck he'd freeze to death or smother in a snowbank.  That's not an acceptable way to die.  

The coin slips back into his glove, so cold it feels like a burn against his skin, and Erik starts navigating his way down.

No one fires at him.  The wind makes up for it, biting against his cheeks and making his eyes water.  

There aren't any fresh footsteps in front of the cabin.  A snowmobile has been parked haphazardly nearby and covered with a thick canvas tarp and has accumulated a layer of snow.  The closer Erik gets the more he doubts his target is inside.  There's no smoke coming from the chimney, and although there is plenty of metal inside none of it is moving.

The front door is unlocked.  Erik opens it slowly, tensed for an attack or an explosion, but nothing comes.  There are no traps.  Inside it's dark and cold, and Erik stands statue-still until his eyes have adjusted, listening carefully for the sound of someone breathing or the movement of any metal.  Nothing.  

There are two rooms: a living space with a narrow loft for sleeping, and a kitchen.  There must be an outhouse behind the cabin, and Erik wants to laugh at the idea of cornering his target in an outhouse, but he's too unsettled for laughter.  The back door is through the kitchen, so that's where Erik goes. 

He finds the body behind the woodpile, protected from the wind and most of the snow.  The gun is resting in the body's slack hand.  Erik tugs on the gun with his ability, and the hand moves too.  Erik flinches back in shock and fear before he realizes that the man must have been sweating when he pulled the trigger.  It's frozen to his hand, that's all.

He stares down at the body for a few long minutes.  He doesn't know if he's relieved or disappointed.  Mostly he's just tired.  His target might have had information regarding Schmidt, but there are other people to try.  Erik will pick up the trail elsewhere.  What he came here to do has been done, and what does it matter how it was done?  Erik tips his head back, staring up at the evening sky, anywhere but the gore in the snow, and breathes.  "At least he had the decency to die outside," he tells the sky, and grabs some firewood to take back inside.

It's hours later when he wakes up from where he'd dozed off in front of the fireplace.  The fire has died down to glowing embers, but it's still pleasantly warm wrapped up in the blankets he'd found.  He hugs them tighter around him and looks at the window.  He'd lowered the curtain when he'd lit the fire, but a sliver of window is still visible, and there's an odd green glow through the glass.  Erik pulls the curtain up and his breath catches.

He sees the night sky, but instead of a dark field of stars there's a streak of bright shimmering green, curving like a river cutting through the heavens.  The field of ice catches the light and reflects it in a thousand directions, bathing everything in a soft, ethereal green.  He's heard of this of course, the Aurora Borealis, but he's never seen it.  It's the most beautiful thing he's beheld in years.  

He puts on his boots and coat and walks into the field.  When he looks up the river of light dances above him.  When he looks down, the snowy slopes of the foothills glow green, an alien landscape dropped onto Earth.

Suddenly and without warning he thinks, I could stay here.  Just for a while.  Or when I'm done, I could come back.  This--here, alone, peaceful and beautiful--this could be my reward.  I could want this. 

It's lonelier than he's ever felt before, but that's okay.  That must be what peace is.

**1965**

The explosion throws Erik to the floor and stuns him.  All he can hear is a high-pitched whine, ringing in his ears.  His shaken mind links it to the taste of blood in his mouth, so that when he spits he's confused that the ringing doesn't stop.   

He lies still for a moment, trying to piece together what happened.  Oh, he must have bit his tongue when he hit the floor.  He spits again and gingerly brings a hand to his head.

The left side of his head is painful to touch, but worse than that he's not wearing his helmet.  It's not next to him either, so it wasn’t knocked off by the explosion.  Erik is starting to recall that wherever he is, he didn't come here by choice.

He stands up.  He's in a hallway, across from a room where the explosion appears to have originated.  The door is hanging off its hinges, inviting Erik to look inside at the destruction, orange and hazy due to the smoke and a few small scattered fires.  

The door had been locked, before, Erik suddenly remembers.  He'd been standing outside grasping at anything metal inside the room and thrashing it about, consumed with anger and frustration.  It looks like a lab inside, with tipped microscopes and scorched incubators.  Erik wonders if he caused the explosion with his outburst.  It seems likely. 

There are two men with lab coats inside, out cold but breathing.  Erik restrains them and moves on.  Maybe they'll have useful information when they wake up. 

He finds blood samples in tubes, lined up neatly in a black plastic holder like rounds in a clip.  They're labeled _Telepath 02_.  Erik sets it back, hands steady, but he feels more shaken than he had right after the explosion.  He reminds himself that it might not be Charles.  The CIA had Emma for weeks; who knows what kind of tests they might still be running on her blood.   Erik's not certain he's in a government facility--the odd honeycomb-shaped logos plastered on everything suggest otherwise--but the government could have outsourced their sinister experiments.  And surely Charles and Emma aren't the only telepaths in the world. 

Nothing ever changes. He's known that for a long time, but it's still sickening. Commit an atrocity, and they--any of them: governments, private institutions, universities--they'll be quick to condemn. But commit an atrocity in the name of science, and their ears will prick forward. If there's knowledge to trade, then any crime can be washed away, easy and unearned _Persilscheine_.

He finds other samples labeled with just numbers.  He can't recall if his blood was drawn, but he thinks he wasn't here long enough.  It doesn't matter anyway, because nothing in this lab will be left standing.

There's an office adjoining the lab.  Erik rifles through the papers on the desk, looking for names, addresses, answers.  Maddeningly, he’s slowed down because often he doesn't know what he's looking at.  He has to stare for several minutes at a report with diagrams of rats balanced on small platforms surrounded by water.  The caption talks about muscle behavior during stages of sleep.  Finally he determines that it's a study on sleep deprivation, but it makes no mention of mutants and he tosses it aside. 

He finds a backpack in the corner into which he stuffs many of the documents, hoping they'll lead the Brotherhood to new targets.  But it's a fire evacuation map pinned to the wall that gives Erik the information he most wants; according to the sign there are test subject holding cells in a basement level of this building.  Erik grins, humorless, and looks for the nearest stairwell or elevator shaft.

He finds Charles and only Charles.

The holding cells are arranged in a half-circle, so that one person can see into all five cells from one conveniently-placed chair.  The cells are hexagonal with mirrored walls, and the doors are the exact same size and shape of the other walls but with two-way mirrors.  The effect is eerily similar to Shaw's mirrored room in his submarine, and Erik feels chills crawl over his body as he stares at the cell straight across from the hallway.  

Charles is sitting, propped up with his back against the door, but Erik can see his face reflected in the cell's back wall.  He appears to be asleep, but even in sleep he looks wretched.  Erik kneels down.  Only the thick glass keeps him from touching Charles's unruly hair or laying a hand on his shoulder.  Erik knocks gently on the glass and calls Charles's name.

Charles jolts as if he's been electrocuted.  "Erik?"

"Yes," he says, "it's me.  Can you move away from the door?"

"Which is--no, sorry, I know which--"  Charles pulls himself slowly and awkwardly until he's leaning against the next wall.  "I must have dropped off while I was waiting for you."

"You knew I was here?"  Erik asks as he examines the latches.  They do contain metal.  His abductors must have meant to keep him somewhere else, then, which against all reason makes him angrier.  What the hell does it matter where they would have kept him, whether or not he was imprisoned next to Charles or half a world away?  

"From the guard."  Charles's eyes have closed again.  His hands are shaking where they rest in his lap.  "This room is good but it's not perfect."

Erik thinks he can open the door if he forces some of the metal bolts out of the way, but he is not going to risk shattering the glass.  He carefully melts one of the bolts and pulls it out sliver by sliver.

Charles twitches again.  "Erik, do be careful."

"I am."

"No," Charles tips his head back and chuckles.  "I mean, be careful of me.  Don't just open the door."

Erik follows Charles's gaze to the mirrored ceiling.  Instead of the surgical sterility of the rest of the cell, the ceiling is covered in cobwebs.  

"Can you see them too?" Charles asks.  

"Do you mean the spiderwebs?  Yes, I can.  Should I not be seeing them?"

Charles laughs again.  "I'm not sure.  They don't seem like they ought to be real, but if they were a hallucination, don't you think my brain could do better?  Write some words in the webs, at least.  Some mutant.  Terrific. Right?"

"You aren't making sense.  Are you saying you're projecting the spiderwebs into both our heads?"

"I'm saying I don't know.  Do they look right to you?"

Erik makes the mistake of checking.  The longer he looks the more wrong they seem--too geometrical, too large and too evenly spaced.  There's a single spider lowering itself down the center of the cell, perfectly graceful.  He shakes his head and redoubles his efforts on pulling out the bolts.  "You knew I was here from the guard, you said.  Did he tell you or did you read his mind?"

"I don't know.  But I think I told him to sabotage your IV.  And here you are.  Like I said, this room isn't perfect."

"Far from it if you can puppet your guards."

"Oh, believe me when I say I tried over and over to get them to release me.  And you--you--don't even know--"  The spider lands on Charles's left knee and he trails off, staring at it intently.

"What?  Charles, what don't I know?"

"I'm going to need help getting out of here," Charles replies.  Erik frowns at the non-sequitur.  "Erik, they haven't let me sleep and I'm not doing well.  I'm going to have to lean on you--borrow use of your--" he lets out a shaky laugh.  "I don't even know how to ask."

Shame and anger pools in Erik's gut.  "You don't need to ask.  Of course you can borrow use of my legs.  It's only fair, isn't it?"

"No, I don't mean your legs.  I'm losing my grip on reality, Erik.  Or I've already lost it.  I need to borrow use of your sanity, and it's not something I'll be able to hold back.  My brain is--is-- _misfiring_ and yours is steady and I need that or I won't know what's real--" he sobs, a dry harsh noise as he presses his hand against his forehead.  Even as his torso and shoulders shake his legs stay perfectly still, and the spider keeps its perch.  

Erik finds himself frozen.  The door is ready to be opened, but suddenly he's got a dozen questions.  He damns Charles for complicating everything.  He was ready a moment ago to scoop him into his arms and make their escape and now…

He hears footsteps a floor above them, several pairs moving with purpose.  All Erik's questions vanish and he opens the door.

Charles gasps, clutching his head, and Erik falls to the floor beside him, and then both Erik and Charles disappear.

The person who opens his eyes struggles to orient himself.  He breathes in and out--slowly and deliberately--with two sets of lungs. He has two hearts, and he can feel them both beating, although one heart rate is faster than the other. He looks down at himself with two sets of eyes and has to blink several times until both images coalesce into one. It's a strange kind of vision--oddly panoramic--but it works. He can see. 

He has two bodies. But that doesn't seem right; both of the bodies are _him_ , so it would be more accurate to say that he has one body that seems to have come apart. Well, that's easy enough to fix.  He pulls one collection of torso and limbs over to the other.  Two of his legs aren't working, but two of his legs are, and he has four working arms and metallokinesis. The two paralyzed legs will hardly slow him down.  He stands a bit awkwardly, sorting out how to best move without his body coming apart again. He has to concentrate on his balance more than he's used to, but that's fine. He has plenty of brain space to go around. His telepathy feels painful when he reaches out with it, so he lets that rest as he walks out of the cell.

He comes across six guards.  His first instinct is to kill them with any metal debris he can find, but his next thought is to pin them against the walls with the small metal clips on their name badges.  It's quicker and quieter, he reasons.  Death is noisy and uncertain, and threat of death sometimes works better.

More guards come and fire at him.  He freezes the bullets but doesn't toss them back.  Instead he lets them lead the way, moving along with the pace of his walking.  He isn't even keeping the bullets hot, but none of the guards seem willing to navigate through the casual cloud of metal.  Soon the guards stop firing altogether.  He smiles with both mouths.  

He finds a door that opens up onto a gravel driveway.  The building he was in is secluded, but he can see a paved road in the distance.  There are more people outside.  His telepathy is still tender, but it's his best bet.  As he walks past groups of people in lab coats and dark business suits, their eyes go glassy and distant.  No one tries to stop him as he climbs into a small van.  It's a bench seat, so he can spread out comfortably.

He wants to drive for hours, but he's too tired.  After twenty, thirty miles he finds a dirt path wide enough for the van and drives until he's obscured from the main road.

It's cold.  He lets half of himself curl up in the seat while he looks in the back.  He finds tools, a spare tire, and a blanket.  It's dirty but it will keep both halves of him warm.  As he wraps it around himself he remembers that night in the dead Nazi's cabin, standing in the snow and staring up at the Northern Lights.  It's a startlingly vivid memory, so much so that he can almost see that river of green as he stares up at the dingy van ceiling.  

He lets the memory play out--from waking up in front of the fireplace to losing himself in the peace, small and insignificant between snow and sky--as he leans back and closes the one pair of eyes he had open.

When Erik wakes up Charles is watching him.  "I'm sorry," is the first thing Charles says.

Erik's head is aching.  His instincts are screaming at him to back away from Charles.  What defenses does he have against a man who can subsume him?  But he's not going to give into his fear.  Defiantly, he pulls Charles closer, tucking the blanket more securely about them.  It's night time now and even colder.  They need to get back on the road and find a town.  He can call the Brotherhood and Charles can call his X-Men, and they can all figure out how two such powerful mutants were abducted.

"Erik?  Are you alright?"  

"Give me a minute to answer that," he snaps, frustrated at his own fear and powerlessness.  Charles nods, his hair tickling Erik's cheek.  Just before Erik had fallen asleep, he'd been feeling so serene.  He reaches for that now, that memory of peace.

He remembers waking up to the glow of dying embers, which cast the room in orange and gold. But there had been a green glow coming in through the window, so they'd stood, trapping the warmth of their bodies in their blankets as they'd gone to the window and lifted the curtain.  And then they'd put on their boots and coats and gone outside…

Erik freezes, suddenly breathless.  Why is he not alone in his memory of that night?

"Charles." His voice comes out strained.  "Do you remember seeing the Northern Lights?"

Charles goes very still.

"I… I do."  Charles finds his hand and holds it.  "We'd decided to stay the night in the cabin.  We probably would have had to anyway; I could count the hours of daylight on one hand, I think.  But it was clean and cozy once we got the fire going.  And then… it was like strokes of calligraphy in green light.  Or maybe it was the paintbrush and the snow was the paper, and we were caught in between."

Erik's heart is pounding.  He doesn't know what this means and it terrifies him.  "You weren't there," he says, and he hates that it sounds like a question.

"I know.  I'm sorry.  When we were remembering--that is, when you were remembering, we shared the experience.  And I suppose when we separated back into two perspectives, our memories accommodated."  He sighs, an incredibly weary sound.  "I could go in and try to fix it..?"

It takes all of Erik's willpower not to flinch.  "No, that won't be… no."

"Does it bother you that I have that memory now?"

Erik shuts his eyes and lets his head tip back.  He remembers standing in the vast field of snow with Charles at his side.  And he can still remember the thoughts that came to him then, unbidden--that they could stay there.  Just for a while.  Or that when they were done, they could go back. That this place--alone, peaceful and beautiful--could be their reward.

It's not lonely, and yet it's everything he imagined peace to be.

As the silence extends, Charles makes a distressed noise. "I'm sorry."

"No."  Erik grabs Charles's hand and holds it against his chest.  "If it means to you what it means to me, you don't have to be sorry."

Charles smiles then, a streak of brilliance in the dark car.  "Erik," he says, "How would you like to go on holiday with me?  Just for a while.  Or maybe after we've done more of our work.  It could be our reward."

Erik laughs, or maybe he sobs--he really can't tell--and he leans forward and kisses Charles.


End file.
